Tuesday, October 27, 2015

Apīlaus the Golden

The stuff of legends, some histories have Apīlaus as a powermad monarch of a decadent society, others paint him as the victim of tragic events, a sensitive soul acquainted with magic. Amongst the forest dwellers there are ancient tales of this the last ruler of the Oamnoi. A mysterious figure, he was said by some to have the power to change into a golden sturgeon, when the moon was darkened, to go and cavort with the river Goddess. In these tales he is portrayed as a benevolent priest-king. The dwarves, on the other hand, have no fondness for Apīlaus in their stories from what they call the fish eaters war. From their perspective he was a tyrant whom they were morally obligated to depose. The fact that they slaughtered most of his subjects in the process strangely doesn't seem to bother them much. What all the stories can agree on is that at the last minute Apīlaus disapeared along with golden splendors of the θenga, the dynastic hoard of the aeon. One story posits that when the king saw that the city of Onua was lost he dumped the hoard into the dark waters of the Shulla and with sorcery turned the gold into fishes. Another legend has him taking the guise of a salt merchant and smuggling the gold off to the north where he would found the nomadic Dzalarat. It is an interesting fact that unlike many famous figures from the history of the Torenwœl Forest, Apīlaus's ghost is not venerated with a summer feast because there was never a sufficient evidence of his death.